It's all about me

In an effort to keep up with the growing list of autobiographies/memoirs William Grimes creates a taxonomy.

Important categories include the retired-statesman (or more likely, bureaucrat) memoir, the traumatic-childhood memoir, the substance-abuse memoir, the spiritual-journey memoir, the showbiz memoir, the spirit-of-place or vanished-era memoir, the illness memoir and the sexual-exploit memoir.

...

Obviously, categories overlap. Sexual-excess memoirs often have a spiritual-discovery aspect to them, as do illness memoirs. Spirit-of-place memoirs often shade into the ethnic-identity memoir, which can, in certain instances, merge with the food memoir, as in "The Language of Baklava," Diana Abu-Jaber's memoir, with recipes, of growing up as the child of an American mother and a Jordanian father. (It should not be confused with "Lipstick Jihad" by Azadeh Moaveni, which is about growing up as an Iranian-American and does not have recipes.)

Via Stefan Beck.